November 20 is the International Transgender Day of Remembrance. Today, we honor the 120 transgender individuals whose murders were reported in the past year, and those whose murders may not have been reported to police or the news service.
For a complete list of names and more information, visit the official Transgender Day of Remembrance site here.
If you are on campus, please take a moment to visit our memorial in the Campus Center. There you can see the faces, names, and stories of those who lost their lives this year due to violence, transphobia, and hate.
Yesterday was the fifth annual Celebrate Intersex Awareness Day.
Some context from the Queers United blog:
“On October 26, 1996, intersex activists from Intersex Society of North America (carrying the sign “Hermaphrodites With Attitude”) and our allies from Transexual Menace held the first public intersex demonstration in Boston, where American Academy of Pediatrics was holding its annual conference. The action generated a lot of press coverage, and made it difficult for the medical community to continue to neglect our growing movement.”
Since then, activists have used October 26 as a day of grass-roots action to end the shame and secrecy surrounding intersex individuals, as well as the unwanted genital cosmetic surgeries that are performed on intersex children (with or without the parents’ knowledge and consent).
For more information on intersex conditions and issues, check out the Intersex Initiative or one of the other Rainbow KnightLight links.
Happy Celebrate Bisexuality Day!
If you go to school or work at St. Norbert, stop by the Campus Center at 7:30 for our Bisexuality Discussion Panel. If not, show your bi or ally pride by celebrating wherever you happen to be.
Some background info about the day:
Celebrate Bisexuality Day has been observed on September 23 since 1990. The day is an opportunity for bisexual, fluid, pansexual and generally queer-identified people and their families, friends and supporters to recognize and celebrate their history, community and culture and the contributions bisexual/pansexual people have made to both the greater LGBT Community as well as to and mainstream culture.
This celebration of the bisexual, fluid and pansexual community in particular, as opposed to general LGBT events, was conceived as a response to the prejudice and marginalization of the bisexual and pansexual persons by some in both the straight and greater LGBT communities.
It features events ranging from picnics and house-parties to discussion groups and poetry-readings . There are dinner parties and dances in Toronto and a large masquerade ball in Queensland, Australia. At Texas A&M University, the week featured discussion panels and question-and-answer sessions. Princeton University celebrates this day each year by throwing a party at its LGBT Center. It has also been celebrated in Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
(source: BiNet USA)
Especially if you can’t make it to the panel, try taking Scarleteen’s Bisexuality Quiz to “check your Bi-Q!”
